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Tag Archives: horror

Jigsaw is a lot better than critics would lead you to think. It’s one of those films with a huge disparity between the Rotten Tomatoes Audience & top critics scores (93% & 27%).

My issue was not that there was too much gore, but that there was not enough. The camera cut away at the promised moments of maximum shocking graphic imagery. The film was also hampered by a parallel, simple-simon story on the level of average TV fare. But there’s still some fun, mostly in the first half. 4/10

Normally I’m not thrilled about turning the entire month of October into a Halloween celebration, but I’m in the mood this year. So are the movie studios; having a Friday the 13th in October helps I reckon.

It often feels like a throwback to both classic ’80s Spielberg flicks and anthology shows like Amazing Stories, and to classic slasher-hackers. The cinematography and direction are refreshingly old-school. And while the occasionally scattershot film lacks cohesion, it makes amends with moments of lyric mirth and an intimacy among its characters normally lacking in such endeavors.

It, a.k.a. Stranger Thingswith a Clown, delivers a twinge of fear right at the beginning, with the clown in the gutter. That moment when we don’t know what will happen is very effective — until something does happen. And once it does, It traverses from scary to silly and never quite comes back. Or maybe put another way, from adult-scary to kid-scary. Once that edge is removed, It was not ably to frighten me as much as it tried.

Then in the latter part of the film, the worst thing imaginable happens: It becomes draggy. Nonetheless, on the strength of its assets, It rises to a marginal 7/10.

I love good edgy indies foreign and domestic; Raw is not one of them. I wasn’t buying most of it, and there wasn’t enough style or substance to overcome its many issues, for example I never felt like I was watching students at a veterinary school, but maybe some sort of weird cult. More problems:

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILERS ALERT! This girl is a devout vegetarian one moment, and the next, for no good reason, is scarfing meat down with abandon. Vet students are animal haters? And she grew up never seeing her father with his shirt off? These and many other issues toss Raw down to B-movie territory, except there’s not enough fun to elicit that B-movie charm. Forced, inorganic storytelling exacerbates these weaknesses.

Still, there was a certain raw, explosive power to the movie that kept it engaging. But even in this regard, when the director was holding a straight flush she folds.

On top of everything else, Raw just wasn’t as original as it’s been made out to be; see Comparison Notes. Entering the local arthouse, I was told that someone had fainted during a previous showing. Barf bags and warning signs were hastily dispatched. I so wished that Raw lived up to all the hype. 5/10

PS Raw is categorized as a horror film, but it’s a joke as a horror film. Hardly horrifying.

Comparison Notes (all recommended): for infinitely better French ‘fare’ about consumption of human flesh — which they have a knack for, check out the greats Delicatessen and Les Amants Criminels; Teeth, every vampire movie ever (Only Lovers Left Alive looks like a masterpiece by comparison), Antichrist,The Neon Demon

“Scary” movies rarely do it for me, but Ouija: Origin of Evil looked promising. It features an appealing sixties setting, a reasonably compelling story for the genre, and a couple ‘boo’ moments that actually work. A marginal recommendation with the standard caveats. 6/10

On a related note: Why is it that zombies or ghosts are always at least 10 times stronger in zombie / ghost form than they ever were while living? Can anyone answer me that?

I think there’s a good movie out there — maybe I’ll have to write it — with ghosts behaving like ghosts. Passing through walls, haunting people’s dreams, that kind of thing. Something that could be truly frightening.

Not much to see here, folks. Not nearly as much as you would think. I was so very much looking forward to The Witch, and so even the more disappointed. An exceptionally strong pot of potential, but nothing exceptional about the movie. The Witch is not without its assets, but this one’s a pass — another miss by A24. 5/10